First, a very overdue announcement – overdue because, during my recent extended (if not serious) illness, I remained completely unconscious of it!
Fortunately, I am now aware that my book The Gentle Traditionalist has been released on Kindle. For those who may be interested, the Kindle edition is currently around $7 at Amazon in the USA and £5 in the UK and Ireland.
However, during my illness, there was also something else I completely failed to notice – and I can hardly help but draw attention to it.
It is a deeply gratifying review that appeared at Amazon from someone under the nom-de-plume of Grammaticus. I thank this soul for these most generous words and I pray there will be no objection to my quoting them here:
This is a perfect-sized Saturday read that lifts the soul, broadens the mind, delights the heart. The Gentle Traditionalist re-enchants the world in its own light-yet-profound way, facing serious problems without flinching and clarifying just how dangerous is the reckless ride that late modernity has been taking us on.
It sweeps away the excuses many of us offer for not accepting the call to embrace the mystery of being, sacramentality, and divine presence. Here is a path to a better enlightenment than rationalism has ever been able to hawk. There is humor and no coercion. The celestial atmosphere is richer not thinner than what we usually breathe. Can we see through the cardboard world we have constructed that disses and dismisses our ancestors? Can we believe again?
I found myself ordering extra copies for friends before I was two-thirds of the way through this touching novel. I am an older, very experienced reader. Most books now weary me quickly even when I am interested in the themes. This one carried me along swiftly to the end in half a day.
Far be it from me to declare books to be classics, but I would not be surprised if this book is already becoming one, despite all of its modesty. I recommend this especially to young adults who are trying to size up the messages that are swamping them through the media. Listen to the Gentle Traditionalist before you go making any rash decisions. Your very life is at stake!
At the risk of too much hype, I want to highlight a couple of things Grammaticus says here.
First, that my book is indeed short and easy to read. In fact, I was startled myself by writing something so accessible – far more accessible than almost anything I have written on Catholic tradition. And never in my life did I seriously contemplate writing a novel, but – by the Grace of God – I surprised myself.
Although I should point out that the term ‘novel’, whilst technically correct, is a little misleading. The book opens and closes with a fictional love story – but this is largely to set the stage for a dialogue of themes and ideas regarding Catholic traditionalism. As the back cover blurb says:
Geoffrey is bewildered, angry, lost. Until, one Valentine’s day in Ireland, he meets a mysterious guide – the Gentle Traditionalist.
Together they commence a most unusual dialogue of ideas concerning:
- The Heart of the Gospel
- The Real Nature of the Church: A Supernatural Mystery
- The Crisis in Catholicism today: the Loss of Tradition
- The New Age Movement
- Catholic Ireland
- Why Secularism gets away with murder
Both whimsical and serious, the dialogue in this book offers a probing exploration of the Catholic Mystery, Christendom and the crisis of the West today.
Join us for a very special Valentine’s day when Geoffrey’s barren, rational world gets turned upside down …
All this may help to explain Grammaticus recommending my book “to young adults who are trying to size up the messages that are swamping them through the media.”
This is a major hope I have for the book – that its light accessible format can reach the young.
For I find that non-traditional people of my own generation (born in the Sixties or thereabout) are usually so solidly entrenched in their various secular and New Age mindsets that they cannot be open to the ideas here. The barriers that have been built up are now too high, too re-enforced, set, as it were, in psychic concrete …
But the young are not yet so solidly entrenched and thus I feel especially grateful to anyone who can help get this book into young hands – whether it is buying copies as gifts (as Grammaticus has done) lending out their own copy or pointing them to the various extracts from this book on this site.
In case you want to do the latter, probably the most important extract is the first chapter here …
If any of you cared to share this first chapter with the young, I would be most grateful. (There are buttons at the bottom of that first chapter to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.)
Thank you and bless you.
Foreword for Monarchy by Roger Buck
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